You won’t find consciousness in the brain
I never knew I was a “neurosceptic”.
Neuroscience may suffer from the same basic metaphorical language problem as quantum physics. See: http://openintelligence.amplify.com/2010/01/17/is-there-a-language-problem-with-quantum-physics-1/
This persepective also raises serious questions about: http://openintelligence.amplify.com/2010/01/14/carnegie-mellon-scientists-crack-brains-codes-for-noun-meanings/
Amplify’d from www.newscientist.com
my argument is not about technical, probably temporary, limitations. It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is.
Many neurosceptics have argued that neural activity is nothing like experience,
We cannot therefore conclude that when we see what seem to be neural correlates of consciousness that we are seeing consciousness itself.
There is nothing in the convergence or coherence of neural pathways that gives us this “merging without mushing”, this ability to see things as both whole and separate.
Our failure
is due to the self-contradictory nature of the task,
the failure to explain “aboutness”,
physical science is about the marginalisation, or even the disappearance, of phenomenal appearance/qualia, the redness of red wine Read more at www.newscientist.com
Categories: CONSCIOUSNESS, Science
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Lee Felten wrote: “We wear ourselves out trying to catch something that is as unobtainable as the wind, when all along it is flowing, ebbing, and rising all around us. We get so caught up in our endeavors that we miss the gentle tickling on our palms.”
2 months ago